blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

I concede.. It is not LIKE  the Galileo affair of the 1600s but it is notable since this is beginning to look like the first major Church vs. secularism tiff in almost 60 years in PH. And like the Galileo affair this present one involves Jesuits and Roman bishops in high and low places, or better yet in all SORTS of PLACES! Jesuits always find themselves in the darndest places! And like the Inquisition's missing out of the truth of Eppur si Muove , the Roman bishops fall into the same old trap! I am referring to Jesuit padre, renowned atmospheric scientist and Ateneo de Manila's President Fr Jett Villarin and his official statement adhering to official Church teaching and how it situates Ateneo's professors who don't agree with the Church on the issue King's  Great Matter. Prof Randy David comments most interestingly on the issue not by rehashing and flogging the anti vs pro RH debate but by commenting on academic freedom in a Catholic affiliated university. ...

Alright, the Philippines is a secular state as defined in its constitution. How can it have an established religion which Wikipedia defines as "a church which is an organ of the state"? However I would argue sociologically that the Catholic Church is an organ of the Philippine state. After all, you have a senator who recently famously said "my foot" on the floor, smooching the Cardinal's ring in his palace when she launched her bid for the presidency against the Protestant Fidel Ramos. Ramos won the vote. That my dear friends is so Canossian, and I am not referring to the socially involved order of nuns but to what Henry IV of the Germans got when he was excommunicated by the Pope! Excommunication was recently first bandied around by one Catholic bishop on the President. Excommunication is a serious business and the Pope today never says the "E" word since we are in an ecumenical age. The Pope as much as possible won't excommunicate unless by...

Christmas party pooper Raymond Palatino seeks to ban this religious symbol in UP's Lantern Parade! The Honourable Raymond Palatino, Member of the Philippine Congress wants religious symbols out of public view especially in government offices and agencies. This is a copycat move and foreign import from the secular West, especially Europe. As a foreign import, it is totally alien to Filipino culture , Christian, Lumad, Muslim etc and MUST BE OPPOSED . Filipinos are a nation of people with a faith tradition who support the separation of Church and State. Why? It is because they believe the separation of Church and State protects their freedoms, most especially of worship. This freedom of worship guarantees religious pluralism and the tolerance of most Filipinos to the diversity of beliefs. The Filipino as a Roman Catholic bishop once said, is "most ecumenical". An good friend of mine, an American Episcopal priest who has spent his whole priestly life in missions i...

The Roman Catholic Church has found it the hard way on the RH bill. Mass prayer rallies do not work on the Aquino administration! The politcally astute, potential papabile , and de facto Primate of all the Philippines, Archbishop of Manila, the Most Rev Dr Chito Tagle has said that the only option for the most numerous Church is the negotiating table. Tomorrow the Iglesia ni Cristo will find it the hard way too if Rappler.com is right . If Catholic liturgies won't work on Noynoy, neither will Grand Evangelical Missions (GEMs) will. For one thing in some political matters, Aquino is beyond evangelizing! This is a result of the increasing secular nature of Philippine society. Aquino doesn't find any value on debts of gratitude to any religious organization . This means that for the Aquino administration, religion has been largely disestablished.  Aquino doesn't care for de facto religious establishment which the INCs doctrine of command votes tries to secure.  Aquino'...

Pope Paul VI famous for the "Smoke of Satan" homily   "The smoke of Satan has entered the Temple of God"  quote is probably Pope Paul VI's most (in)famous soundbite. He allegedly said it during a homily at St Peter's basilica and delivered in Italian on 29 June 1972. I remember very well that in the turbulent 1970s, a fiendish spell of "Devil" and "Antichrist" movies starting from the iconic "Exorcist", "the Omen" and to the equally infamous and atrocious "Amityville Horror" became the staple of cinemas. And my sisters were fans of this genre and so I got to see them all!  Of course a Pope giving a public address with something like "Satan" in it would, to understate it, attract public and media attention (and thus became the inspiration for the "Devil" movies of the 1970s)  So to this day Catholics and non-believers want to find out what the Pope really meant. And so that will inclu...

The Philippine Catholic Church hierarchy says it will fight the RH bill to the very end. A church spokesman has publicly  said that the pollsters should stop polling on public support for the RH bill. I think this is a desperate move and the institutional Church should accept that the RH bill will be eventually passed with significant public support. The Church should have had a rude  awakening by now that Excommunication can't sway public views and that it should engage with Filipino secular society in a more constructive way. The Church should cut down its losses and stop trying to prevent the secular waves from wetting its feet! The problem is that the RH bill is seen more as a social, economic and political issue rather than a moral one. This is not to say that the RH bill has no moral dimension (all human acts have) but the Church should shift the battle from stopping the RH bill from being passed to catechizing Catholics even better on this issue. The best exemplar o...

 No amount of CBCP spin doctoring can repair the damaged credibility of the Philippine Catholic Church with the rest of the Universal Church after CBCP president Bishop Nereo Odchimar unleashed the "e" word (excommunication) in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The Philippine Church is now the laughingstock of the whole Catholic world!   This will not amuse His Holiness at all! Odchimar speculated on the grounds that the President of the Philippines could be excommunicated for doing his Constitutional duties. For that irresponsible statement,  he should resign his position. Pinoy Catholics should  ask the Holy Father Benedict XVI to translate him to a titular see. He deserves to be the Archbishop of Leptis Magna and he can excommunicate Muammar Kadaffy for all we care.

I am a staunch supporter of the disestablishment of the Catholic Church in the Philippines. By disestablishment, I mean the Church will relinquish all pretensions to political power and by doing so, she becomes closer to the will of her founder, Jesus Christ. Well it seems that She is headed that way even if her bishops don't think it that way. By calling for civil disobedience on the RH (Reproductive Health) Bill, the bishops enjoin Catholics to "obey God first rather than the Government". If we were in Tudor England, such a statement is treasonous. I don't think a majority of Catholics will follow the bishops. After all, hardly anyone believes using artificial contraception is a matter of proscribing the faith.  In short people will think it is daft to go into civil disobedience over a condom!  This whole call for civil disobedience will be a guaranteed flop.  Unfortunately the whole idea of contraception according to Catholic teaching offends morals. The Chur...

In 1992 the Church of England (CoE) voted in its Synod to ordain women priests. It followed the wake of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States (TEC) which decided to ordain women priests in 1979. The first Anglican church to ordain a woman is Hong Kong, whose bisjop ordained its first woman priest Florence Lim in 1944 as a response to a need to minister to women during the Japanese occupation of the territory. It became obvious that when the CoE decides to ordain women as priests then it must ordain them as bishops. TEC ordained its first woman suffragan bishop Barbara Harris in 1989. However the first Anglican church to ordain a woman bishop as a diocesan was New Zealand who ordained Penny Jamieson in 1989. TEC elected a woman primate (head of a national church), Dr Katherine Jeffert-Schori in 2006. On the picture here is a supposed ancient depiction of the Virgin Mary as a priest and bishop. She is supposed to wear the Pallium, which is a vestment used only by metropol...

This whole brouhaha about sex education in the schools shows that a lot of Filipinos have a narrow idea of what sex is. Sex for most is limited to the reproductive organs and the sexual act. And this gives the Church, parents and teachers on who should be the right people to tell children about sex. May I suggest Charles Darwin? Unfortunately he is dead and buried in Westminster Abbey. But his book (which I believe is more radical than his own "Origin of Species") "The Descent of Man" lies down our modern ideas on how we should look at sex. Sex is crucial to understanding evolution. First of all Darwin observed that the sexes are different. The males have structural differences from the female and in some cases these are so obvious. Look at the horns in some mammals. In some cases, only males have them and in most cases, the males have larger horns. These are what we call secondary sexual characteristics. Any child who grew up in a farm notices these (after all chil...

It may surprise the reader that scientists are spiritual creatures too. The Roman Church recognizes sainthood (by canonization) of pious people who can be exemplars for the faithful to live lives of holiness. The Catholic Church being in the fullest sense, catholic, has saints for almost every calling in life ir life's problems. And Catholics call these people as "patron saints". Lawyers have St Thomas More. Doctors have St Luke. Even the Internet has its own patron saint, St Isidore of Seville, who 1000 years before the World Wide Web was invented, wrote 20 volumes of the Etymologiae documenting the knowledge of his time. It is said that the work is like a relational database. Countries and other geographic entities have their saints too. You may get the hives because of a hairy caterpillar. You then call on St Magnus of Fussen (Who is he?! Where is Fussen?) Saints also carry national identities even if they never lived in the country were they are patrons. For example ...

The old Roman Church calendar had January 1 as the Feast of the Circumcision ("tuli" in Filipino) of Christ. Why there is a circumcision is told in Genesis 17 as a reminder of YHWH's covenant with Abraham. Verse 12 has it as " And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every male throughout your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any foreigner, that is not of thy seed." In the covenant, Abraham was promised that he will have many descendants by his wife Sarah. Abraham's son with Sarah' Isaac was circumcised 8 days after he was born, his eldest son with Sarahs servant Hagar, Ishmael, at 13 years and Abraham himself at 90 years. Christian Tradition holds that the real start of Jesus's shedding of blood for our salvation started on his circumcision. This was also the time when Jesus was named as Jesus. Another name of the feast is "The Naming of Jesus" The new Roman Calendar promulgated by Pa...

The Pope last October 20 announced a scheme to bring in disaffected Anglicans (Episcopalians in the USA and the Philippines) into the Catholic Church while allowing them to maintain their ecclesial traditions. The Pope's moves comes as an Apostolic Constitution called Anglicanorum Coetibus or in my rough Latin to English translation means "on groups of Anglicans". Apostolic Constitutions are Papal Bulls since they have an importance that concern the universal Church. I have a keen interest in Anglicanorum Coetibus since we have Anglicans in the family and I was raised as one attending services at Cathedral Heights as a child. The Anglican Communion has been dealing with issues on female priests and bishops, episcopal authority, the ordination of non-celibate gays and now the blessing of gay unions. It seems that the last two issues are the two last straws the broke the camel's back. Conservatives in the USA have split from the Episcopal Church (TEC) and formed the...

The genius of the Catholic Church is that it can update its practices and expressions of belief no matter how long that may take. Paradoxically the Benedictine papacy has made great strides in recovering the traditions that Vatican II lost. But in this context, we read that Roman Catholic bishops in Italy want that there should be a fasting from electronic gadgets for Lent. And this includes SMS texting and iPods! Earlier on the Vatican released an updated list of the Seven Deadly Sins. Since I have a bit of traditionalist streak, I would prefer to use the old appellation "The Seven Cardinal Sins" :-) The Philippines has had one and we seem to be haunted by him still. The new list has drug trafficking, environmental destruction and obscene wealth on top of the old luxuria, gula, avaritia, acedia ira etc. The public saw this as a novel attempt by the Benedictine church to remind the planet that sins still matter. Some in public were made to reflect and some ridiculed t...

Pope Benedict XVI last October 31 addressed the Pontifical Academy of Science which is beginning its commemoration of the 150th year of publication Darwin's "Origin of Species". The Academy is meeting on " Scientific Insight into the Evolution of the Universe and of Life". The Pope builds upon similar addresses and encyclicals of popes Pius XII and John Paul II who declared that there is no conflict between science and the faith even in prickly topics such as biological evolution. Benedict's important insight is expressed in " This genesis was not seen as a creation, but rather a mutation or transformation; it involved a somewhat horizontal interpretation of the origin of the world. A decisive advance in understanding the origin of the cosmos was the consideration of being qua being and the concern of metaphysics with the most basic question of the first or transcendent origin of participated being. In order to develop and evolve, the world must first ...

Rowan Williams made history as the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury to pray and preach at Lourdes. Lourdes is where the Virgin Mary is believed to appeared before Bernadette Sobirous, an unlettered peasant girl. Bernadette's visions since then have been officially declared worthy of belief and so Lourdes has become the best known Roman Catholic shrine in the world. Rowan Cantuar preached "When Mary came to Bernardette, she came at first as an anonymous figure, a beautiful lady, a mysterious 'thing', not yet identified as the Lord's spotless Mother. And Bernardette – uneducated, uninstructed in doctrine – leapt with joy, recognising that here was life, here was healing. " By doing so, he for all intents and purposes accepted two Catholic dogmas proclaimed infallibly by the Popes, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Virgin. These dogma are explicitly rejected by Protestants and constitute as the ecumenical stumbling blocks. The Eastern Or...

A senior Vatican prelate has said that "evolutionary theory is not incompatible with Catholic teaching" Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council of Culture made the declaration at a recent press con announcing next year's Church sponsored interdisciplinary conference on the 150th anniversary of Darwin's Origin of Species. The fact that the Roman Church has considered this anniversary an important event shows that it values reason and scientific inquiry and demonstrates evolutionary theory and science as important in world culture. The conference will be attended not only by evolutionary biologists, but theologians, philosophers, humanists and artists. Best of all, I believe this another broadside in Pope Benedict XVI's culture war against fundamentalism of all sorts. Benedict recently warned against literal interpretation of the Bible in a speech to academics and intellectuals in Paris. In stronger and more direct words than what his prede...

Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ for the unexpected. This is something to brighten up any Pinoy parent's day. Somewhere in our troubled world, all is well and good. There is a Catholic school that doesn't charge tuition! Amazingly according to the parish priest, Father Haney "The collection plate on Sunday helps pay for the school". More amazingly The priest also says ""There is no required payments. There are no hidden payments. It just comes from the generosity of the people of the parish." Best of all the good padre doesn't beg for cash. He just gives a financial accounting and position of the school to the parish. How does the parish do it? The churchgoers answer "1 Corinthians 16:2" The lessons of this small parish school should be lernt by our bishops and priests who find politics a their vocation and not following Christ as well as the secular state, whose ministers find stealing money as the highest vocation. Heaven will be on ear...

All Catholic catechisms state that a deacon is 1) a man in Holy Orders, 2) consecrated to the ministry of service, 3) may lead and conduct services except the Mass and hearing confessions. He can solemnize weddings and conduct funerals and is the cleric that proclaims the Gospel at Mass 4) may have a wife. There are two kinds of deacons, the transitional one and the permanent one. The transitional deacon is in a sort of probationary training for the priesthood. Later on he will be ordained as a priest. The permanent ones will remain deacons for the rest of their lives. All the deacons I know are permanent ones and one is married. Deacon Jody in Baton Rouge is a lawyer with a flourishing practice. He is married and with two grown-up kids. Deacon Paul in Australia is unmarried and is involved with university and crisis ministries. If a deacon is ordained as an unmarried man, he is vowed to celibacy. If a deacon is ordained as a married man, he is vowed to matrimony. Perhaps nothing shows...

Mike Tan wrote something about a little known church in the Philippines. The Episcopal Church in the Philippines (ECP) is the Anglican Church in the Philippines. The Episcopalians ("Piskies" is a term of endearment) run one of the best hospitals in the country (St Luke's), the best weaving school (Easter's in Baguio), a college now a university with a good track record (Trinity),and the oldest international school (Brent). For a church with just about 200K members, the ECP has influenced education and ecumenism far beyond its size. Its reason for existence in the Philippines is the key. The first bishop in the Philippines, Charles Henry Brent declared that the church won't build an "altar over another altar".This was during an unecumenical time. When the Americans came, Protestant missionaries divided the country for their mission to preach "the true Christian religion" to a country that is majority Catholic Christian. Brent gave the Philippine...